Elon Musk demanded the impeachment of the federal judge who blocked his federal spending task force from accessing the payment systems at the Treasury Department.
“A corrupt judge protecting corruption,” Musk tweeted in the early hours of Sunday morning. “He needs to be impeached NOW!”
U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer ruled Saturday that special government employees and officials outside of the Treasury ought to be prohibited from accessing systems that contain sensitive information, effectively booting out Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in the process.
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His ruling was part of a lawsuit filed a day earlier by 19 Democratic state attorneys general over concerns about Musk and his team’s access to private information.
It is the latest escalation amid years of bombast hurled by Trump World at the judicial system.
Trump and his allies have attacked the legitimacy of judges, courts, and law enforcement when their actions haven’t accorded with the president’s desired outcomes.
In his decision, Engelmayer cited the twin risks of “disclosure of sensitive and confidential information and the heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking” as his reasons for siding with the plaintiffs.
Earlier this month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent granted Musk and his team access to his department’s systems.
While the Treasury claimed Musk and his team only had “read-only” access—meaning they could not delete or alter any data in the department’s systems—Wired reported that at least one DOGE staffer was granted tech permissions to rewrite code.
The tech staffer who was granted access, 25-year-old Marko Elez, is one of several young men with no government experience whom Musk has recruited to join his task force. Trump charged DOGE with the monumental task of suggesting $2 trillion in spending cuts and savings across the U.S. federal government.
Elez resigned after the Wall Street Journal uncovered racist posts he had made on X. Musk rehired him almost immediately. Meanwhile, a 19-year-old on Musk’s team was reportedly fired by a cybersecurity firm for leaking sensitive company secrets.
Engelmayer’s emergency ruling will be in place until at least Friday, when the judge will rule on whether to extend the injunction while the case makes its way through the courts.
